Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday June 28, 2009 @02:18AM
from the game-over-man-game-over dept.

Giant Bomb notes that Obsidian Entertainment has officially stopped work on the Aliens RPG they had been working on. In a post on their forums, an Obsidian employee confirmed rumors that development was no longer underway, and Sega later indicated that they were looking do so something else with the IP. "The Aliens franchise offers us so much content to choose from that we feel it important to take a step back and carefully consider the type of game we want to release." Aliens: Colonial Marines appears to still be in development, though it won't be out this year.

An RPG set in the Aliens universe doesn't really work, did anyone think this was a good idea? There's not a lot choices other than "die or don't die" in the Aliens movies and games so far...how deep could it really get? Good riddance, let developers work on something with more potential (from an RPG side of things).

There's not a lot choices other than "die or don't die" in the Aliens movies and games so far...how deep could it really get?

You could play an employee in Weyland-Yutani. There could be inter-office feuds. Collect enough paperclips and get promoted !Fight your way to the cafeteria past those damn marketing guys with rubber bands !Become a PHB and redecorate your office !

Yes, I have to agree with this. I do hope Colonial Marines doesn't follow in the path of this, though.

The Aliens franchise hasn't been treated anything like as well as it deserves to be in recent years, in gaming terms. I mean, what have we had? A crap AvP RTS on the Playstation 2 and Xbox, a rubbish AvP shooter on the PSP, a few cellphone games and a decent-ish arcade machine. When you consider that the Aliens franchise has had such a huge impact on gaming culture (as the inspiration behind the look and feel of games like Doom), this looks a bit sad.

I think the whole AvP thing has been a bit of a depressing sideline. Personally, I find the Predator about as scary and cool as the average episode of Dora the Explorer. I remember when I was about 12 or so, my parents used to control what I watched at home pretty carefully. However, I had a friend whose parents were far more lax, so when I went over there, I often saw stuff I'd never be allowed to see at home. I remember watching Predator over there (it must have been newly out on VHS at the time) and not being bothered in the slightest. A few weeks later, I remember seeing Alien there. I didn't sleep for a month after that. Whichever way you look at it, the Alien is just a better baddie.

AvP2 for PC was 1/3rd of a very decent game. That 1/3rd was the Marine campaign, which was scary as hell. The less said about the "hunt for the breakable vent" and "stupid jump puzzles" flow of the Aliens and Predator campaigns, the better. Of course, the game hasn't aged fantastically well; the engine wasn't considered great at the time and looks and feels very nasty indeed now.

The technology to make a genuinely scary-as-hell Aliens fps has been around for a few years; basically since Doom 3 appeared. All it needs is some reasonably believable squad AI, a writer with a sense of pacing (ie. somebody who understands that having periodic lulls in the action is way scarier than pure run and gun) and a plot that DOESN'T revolve around some mad scientist experimenting on the aliens. It's disappointing that nobody has yet risen to the challenge. The release date for Colonial Marines keeps slipping - here's hoping it doesn't do a Duke Nukem Forever on us.

The technology to make a genuinely scary-as-hell Aliens fps has been around for a few years

You've never seen a facehugger jump you unexpectedly from a dark corner in multiplayer in AvP2, now have you? When you're playing against other people in a setting this fast-paced, you tend to ignore graphics and game phyisics.

Really, I think there's a lot that can be done in the Aliens universe. Just because there are Aliens around, there's nothing to stop lengthy stories of intrigue (as to why the corporation is trying to gather aliens, splinter groups trying to stop it etc). Half life did a pretty good job of putting a reasonable story on 'Humans meet aliens. Aliens kill humans.'.

My advice is not to look to the movies and games but to the predator pulp novels which are alien _and_ predator books (not a spoiler as such. That's the series' whole universe.) Basically, human female warrior protagonist surviving a precarious acceptance among the predators sporting against aliens.

I had _such_ a kick-ass AvP movie sketched out in my own mind following on that universe that I perceived the first AvP movie as one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever sat through. In fact, it fascinates me

An RPG set in the Aliens universe doesn't really work, did anyone think this was a good idea? There's not a lot choices other than "die or don't die" in the Aliens movies and games so far...how deep could it really get?

I just don't understand what an Aliens MMO would have looked like, if it was centered around the actual Alien aliens. How many different monsters does this really lend itself to? Sure, when aliens pop out of various creatures, they tend to resemble that creature more. But how many black dog-ish alien, black horse-ish alien, black tiger-ish alien, etc. can you really deal with before it just become monotonous?

And then there's the whole question of the deadliness of the aliens. The major aspect of the movies is how these are near unstoppable killing machines. How exactly does that square with "Bring me back 20 dog-ish alien hides" quests? When one player could play a character that slaughters thousands of aliens in their lifetime without (mostly) dieing, then the players have become the unstoppable killing machines and the aliens are relegated to target dummies.